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Osmosis Jones World Premiere
Sometime cool things happen out of pure coincidence. For example, take Friday night two weeks ago. After I woke up that morning, I glanced at the newspaper. I always check the entertainment section to see where each new releases is playing this weekend. To my great surprise, I see an ad for Osmosis Jones. 'Oh Great! Warner is having sneak previews of it this weekend.' I read closer and learn that The Montreal Just for Laughs festival was having the world premiere of the film later that day. I took an hour lunch to go get some tickets for the second screening at 9:30pm. Apparently the 7pm showing was already sold out. We got there an hour early to get good seats but we got stopped at the doors. A red carpet was in front and a few stars attended the 7pm showings. We waited to see who was leaving. Heavy security outside and suddenly guess who's walking down the stairs... Morpheus himself. Wow, I gotta admit Laurence Fishburne looks short in real life. Morpheus! Darn it, that just made my week. Call me Fanboy, I don't care. Some lesser known stars start coming down. Dave Foley (Newsradio) and Eugene Levy (American Pie) walked by. Eugene was right in front of me for a good two minutes while he was chatting with one of his kids. I couldn't remember his name, so I didn't wanna come up to him and say: 'Hey! You're Jim's Dad'. Security just hadn't left yet when Brandy came out. She's a sweetheart. She stopped her entourage and signed autographs for some kids. She's cute, I gotta admit that. Security leaves the theatre and we enter. The MC tells us we are the first paying audience to see the film. Yipee Doo... Here we go:
My Review of Osmosis Jones
Meet Frank (Bill Murray), your typical 21st Century widower. His daughter Shane (Elena Franklin) hopes he will accompany her class to a weekend hiking trip. Unfortunately, Frank has had a serious fallout with Shane's school teacher (Molly Shannon) thanks to a science project gone awry. While he figures out what to do, a dangerous virus named Thrax (Laurence Fishburne) has entered his body. Loose cannon white blood cell Osmosis Jones (Chris Rock) is given a new partner, a fish-out-of-water cold pill named Drix (David Hyde Pierce). Together they investigate the mysterious situation before it kills Frank.
I am really surprised by how much I enjoyed this film. It was extremely entertaining and very funny. A few months ago, I had the chance of reading an early script of the production. The animated sequences have almost all remained the same but the live-action scenes have completely changed. Kudos to the Farrelly Brothers for saving that script. Imagine having one half of a movie being Dumb and Dumber and the other is a Chris Rock buddy cop movie. That's basically what Osmosis Jones is. Oddly enough, it works almost perfectly.
Put the live-action sequences together and you've got yourself a short Farrelly Brothers film. They continue their gross-out humor style with very digusting jokes. Way more then I expected from a PG rated movie. Vomit, exploding zits, sneezing, dirty feet, animal humor etc... They bodly go where they've been before. It's funny but it seems like we've seen these jokes before. I did laugh hysterically at the two sequences involving Frank and the poor teacher. Farrelly Brothers regular Chris Elliott is also hilarious and steals a few scenes. Like most Farrelly movies, no real acting is required, just stand there and be funny.
The animation was great. It's not a Walt-Disney movie or a CG animated movie but it still looks good. The entire voice cast does a wonderful job. Chris Rock is hard to understand at first but we get use to his ebonics-speaking white blood cell. David Hyde Pierce, William Shatner and Joel Silver are okay, but nothing spectacular from their characters. As for Laurence Fishburne, he's not the scariest animated villain that I have seen but he does an okay performance. The animators spoofed The Matrix (no surprise there) and Titanic (the movie's funniest joke). I hope it's not the last movie from Warner Animation.
Opening it agaisnt American Pie 2 is not a smart move but the movie might have legs. I hope it will succeed and maybe we will see other animated movies that are THAT different in the future.
Stay tuned...
That's all folks...
Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)
Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org
Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.
